In the emptiness and silence of the late afternoon, Darcy Tucker, tears forming in his eyes, sits at a glass-topped table in a secluded corner of the Chateau Laurier Hotel's lobby, and he is the aches and pains and scars of all the hard dreams of a father he loves, but could never please, and still can't.

Darcy Tucker's body is the 15 years stigmata of striving for the respect of Dale Tucker and he knows it will go on for as long as he plays hockey; there is no satisfying the father to whom expectations for his son have no terminus.

A lump of a scar pokes through his left eyebrow. Scars cross each eyelid. Scars cross beneath his nose. Scars criss-cross his chin preventing his full growth of goatee. A scar adorns the back of his head. He has broken the orbital bone of his right eye. He has broken a big toe three times. He has broken his foot. He has broken his wrist. He has broken his thumb. He has broken his nose. He has broken his front teeth and had them replaced many times.

Dale Tucker, farmer, was only a boy of 18 when his first son was born, and he was tough then and he's tough now, and Darcy Tucker, who loves and respects his father, says he owes all that he is and hopes yet to be to his unforgiving, demanding father.

Darcy Tucker is his father; the father who owns a cattle and grain farm near the Alberta hamlet of Endiang where Tucker, 27, grew up with his only sibling Dwight, four years younger, and he says: "My dad is the most competitive person I ever met. I had a very strict upbringing from both my parents. My dad, he'd just as soon as"--his voice trails off--"as look at you.

"He always set the bar high for me. He never gave out compliments, just what I did wrong. If I didn't do my chores on the farm as a little kid, I'd get my ass kicked. Literally. If I dropped a bail of hay I was carrying, he would give me a swift kick in the ass and say 'Get up.'

"He coached my hockey teams from when I was five to 14. We used to have some bad fights in the car on the way home." A smile plays on his lips. "One time, I guess I was about 10, he was upset over how I played. He knew I could play better and we got into an argument. He stopped the car, threw me out, and made me walk.

"My parents taught me never to give up on anything. Nose to the grindstone. You can tell that by the way I play. I know I'm a throwback to the way hockey used to be played. The game has gone soft. Players now run and hide behind somebody.

"The media says our series with the Islanders was full of cheap shots. It wasn't cheap shots, it was just good, tough, old-fashioned hockey. It sickens me, these broadcasting guys on TV who were once players in the league crying about all the cheap shots, and yet they were the same guys who used to slash and knee people."

Darcy Tucker's incessant quest for respect does not include only his father, but the referees and the media. "Look, I know it's part my fault. I'm treated like the kid who cried wolf too many times. I tried to draw penalties out of desperation when I first came up because I didn't get to play much. It's hard to shake that reputation. But, in Toronto, the media calls me Sideshow Bob and that's wrong. They make me sick. I'm not that at all.

"My junior coach, Don Hay, described me best. He said 'This is a guy who brings his hard hat and lunch bucket and comes to work. I'm just a hard-working farm boy. You can never take that out of me. My favourite meal is steak and mashed potatoes with my mother's banana cream pie for desert."

Suddenly, a small boy comes over to the table in the hotel and asks if Darcy Tucker will sign his Leafs pennant. When Darcy Tucker was 8, his father drove him to the town of Hanna where Lanny McDonald of the Calgary Flames was signing autographs at a jewelry store. It was Darcy Tucker's first autograph and he has never forgotten the thrill. Now, he takes the boy's pen and signs. "There you go, son," he says gently, touching the boy's arm.

He watches him go, and then: "I'm a very caring person. I care deeply about everything I do. If you're good to me, I'll be your life-long friend. But, if you cross me, you've crossed the wrong person. My dad is the same way."

Suddenly, a memory brings the tears to his eyes. "I always get a lump in my throat when I think of it, but the saddest day for me was when my parents sent me away to play bantam in Red Deer. I was only 15. I rode my bike to school, I was too young to drive. For the first couple of months, I was so homesick I cried every night."

But, it was part of the price of fulfilling Dale Tucker's dream. When the son eventually made the Kamloops Junior A team of the WHL, there'd be no riding a bike anymore; the proud father bought him a new Pontiac Tempest car.

"I loved that car, I had it for three years," says Darcy Tucker who, one season with Kamloops, scored 64 goals with 73 assists in 64 games; played on three Memorial Cup champions, scoring the winning goal in two of the deciding games; and was a member of Canada's gold medal junior team in 1995.

His voice softening: "I know I'm not the best player, but you won't find a more competitive player than me. I play cards and board games with my wife, and I love my wife, but there's no way I'm going to lose to her or let her beat me.

"I'm a very nervous person, emotionally. My wife says my worst habit is biting my fingernails. I do it constantly. She hates it. I wear my emotions on my sleeve, and sometimes it's a detriment to me and the people around me. I want to win so bad, it hurts. When we lost to New Jersey in the play-offs last year, it was devastating. I went to a place in the dressing room to be alone and cried."

Darcy Tucker and his wife Shannon have a three-year old daughter Owynn, an 18-month old son Cole and a three-year old German Shepherd named Tracker.

"Do you know," he says, "that if you have been lying dead for a long time in your house, your pet dog would sit beside you and let itself starve to death, but, if you had a cat, it would eat you? You can't trust cats."

News: St. Petersburg Times 3/20/99
Tucker, Wilkie Combine For a Fatherhood Tie
By Tom Jones

Darcy Tucker and David Wilkie have been best friends for seven years. You rarely find one without the other. They were even traded to the Lightning together -- on Jan. 15, 1998. Both are 24. Both come from the western part of the continent. Heck, their biographies and statistics are on consecutive pages in the Lightning media guide. But they may have carried this friendship thing a little too far. The two had daughters born less than two hours apart Thursday night. Wilkie and his wife, Jackie, celebrated the birth of their second child when Mackenna Grace (7 pounds) was born at 7:15 p.m. At 8:54, Tucker and his wife, Shannon, celebrated the birth of their first child, Owynn Faith Victoria (6 pounds, 7 ounces). "We've done everything else together, so why not this?" Tucker said. "When we got pregnant, we called (Wilkie and his wife) and told them. Two weeks later, they called us, and David said, "You're not going to believe this.' " Even though Wilkie's daughter was born two weeks early, Tucker and Wilkie think it's possible their children were conceived on the same night -- in the same hotel. "I'm pretty sure my wife got pregnant at (Tucker's) wedding," Wilkie said. "I know my wife got pregnant the night we were married," Tucker said. Either way, the women had different labors. Jackie Wilkie was in labor for 51 hours and Shannon Tucker was in labor for about 17 hours. "It's amazing," Tucker said about his daughter. "To look at something so little, and it's like looking at yourself is just amazing."

It's almost Tucker season
Agitator will shine brighter in playoffs
By MIKE ULMER -- Toronto Sun

It's tough being a hate magnet. You can agitate, you can needle, you can impede and attack, but somewhere inside all of us there is an insatiable urge to be liked and accepted.

"I've read some books where the people say, 'I don't need to be be liked, I just need to be respected, ' " Maple Leafs coach/general manager Pat Quinn said yesterday.

"That's a bunch of bull. You want to be liked."

And Leafs forward Darcy Tucker is no different.

"I guess I'm an idiot," he said yesterday prior to last night's game against the Florida Panthers. "I read the papers and watch sports television. I follow what's being said about me."

Tucker is sensitive, and the proof is in the numbers.

After finishing second in team scoring last season with 24 goals, 59 points and a team high plus-24, Tucker has but eight goals this season with 32 points and is a minus-10.

His low-bridge hit on the New York Islanders Mike Peca in last spring's playoffs tainted this season.

Tucker still insists the hit was within the game's code.

"It wasn't an attempt to injure," he said. "If he isn't hurt nothing is said."

But it was, in fact, over the line, a fact that seemed exacerbated by every subsequent replay. While Tucker escaped penalty, the league moved to ban such hits. Every game in Long Island and against the Islanders has featured talk of vendetta.

Flushed out of the bushes, Tucker has been the target of fans and, he insists, officials. "They see number 16 and the arm goes up," he said.

An article in Sports Illustrated that painted him and his teammates as the league's biggest whiners made the situation, if possible, even worse.

Now, I do not defend the Peca hit, which I think was gratuitous and disastrous for both players. That said, Tucker must live and thrive in the margins of the game. He is not big, not particularly fast and his hands aren't those of a jeweller. He is a tweener who found his only way to the NHL by inciting hatred from his opponents.

Skill players dazzle. Fighters fight. Their roles are absolute and immutable.

But what about the hate magnets? Theirs is a specialty and the players who can distract their opponents, focus their teammates and not fall into parody are rare indeed.

The night before he was traded from Buffalo to Ottawa, Vaclav Varada completely tipped a game against Tampa Bay in the Sabres' favour by tangling with Lightning goalie John Grahame. A hate magnet is what the Senators were buying, and they will stand a little taller come playoff time.

Finding just the right hate magnet is never easy.

As the Panthers gritty Olli Jokinen said: "If I had a chance, I'd want Darcy Tucker on my team. He knows his role, he plays with energy and he can take the other team's best player off his game."
But Tucker can and has done the same thing to himself. He hasn't found the right on-ice temperature for an 82-game season. Inside, I think he knows he went too far in the Islanders series, that he fell off the razor's edge. This season has been the casualty. The emotion has often been missing. Momentum, when finally captured, evaporates.

"I'll be on a high, then if I have a bad game I'll get down on myself," he said. "I've found it hard to find the right adrenaline level for 82 games."

Quinn has begun easing Shayne Corson out of the lineup. Corson, of course, is Tucker's brother-and-law.

"I never had an older brother and he never had a brother," Tucker said. "So we're close."

But not so close, Tucker insisted, that his play has suffered from Corson being excised.

"I've heard that said before and we have a real familiarity on the ice, but I played in the league before Shayne came to Toronto," Tucker said. "I don't think I need Shayne here for me to be successful."

Still, barring a trade or injury, Corson and Tucker will be key defensive elements in the post-season.

Not only can a good playoff obscure a bad regular season, this is the time of year when Tucker's style returns to vogue.

The talking. The chippiness.

It is nearly Darcy Tucker season, and he can see his solace, just over the horizon.

"It's weird ... during the playoffs the game just comes to me," he said. "It's more physical, it's played with more emotion. I don't have to go out and find it at all."

Tucker has that picked-on feeling
By STEVE SIMMONS -- Toronto Sun

You stand beside Darcy Tucker, who is hunched over and carrying his left arm in a sling and, for the first time you, realize how small he really is.

How small he seems on the day after the night before.

There is no scowl on his face, no menacing grin, just a sense of anger and, moreso, of sadness.

He never saw Daniel Alfredsson coming, was completely focussed on the puck and the task. He never saw Ottawa score the winning goal that shouldn't have been, never knew until he had been helped from the ice and into the dressing room that there hadn't even been a whistle blown. That the Leafs were trailing 3-2 in the best-of-seven series.

"I just wonder," Tucker said yesterday, "if they stood two feet from the boards and had their head rammed into the boards, one of these guys who make the decisions, how would they feel?

"They don't have the luxury of being that way, so it's very disappointing."

Very disappointing still that the right call wasn't made at the right moment. Very disappointing that with hindsight and enough replays to make a case, that the National Hockey League still didn't have the appropriate courage to acknowledge its own mistake one complicated day later.

The mistake that cost the Leafs a game and probably cost Darcy Tucker what's left of his season.

The mistake that may finally have ended this patchwork of a playoffs for the forever wounded Leafs. A two-minute penalty that could have changed everything.

GILMOUR LOOK

The Leafs book lists Darcy Tucker at 5-foot-11 and 185 pounds, but he is neither that tall nor that heavy. The sling aside, he has that look Doug Gilmour used to have in Toronto at about this time in the playoffs.

The look of someone who can't afford to take off any more weight, the look of someone who plays big even if his body doesn't support it. The look, until Friday night, of someone who refused to be defeated.

The same way a Maple Leafs team without Mats Sundin, without Dmitry Yushkevich, without Jyrki Lumme and Karel Pilar and Mikael Renberg and Garry Valk -- and have we missed anybody? -- has refused to be defeated in the series with Ottawa.

But strange how things turn out. Strange that Darcy Tucker, a heart-and-soul guy if he is on your team, a despicable miscreant if he plays for the opponent, wound end up injuring his own team by reputation, if nothing else.

"I guess they (referees) say they don't look at the number on the back, but I'm trying to figure out if that's Steve Yzerman getting hit like that, what happens?" Tucker said.

'I GET ABUSE'

"Just like the other night, he goes in, goes under, hits (Chris) Pronger, just like what happened with me and (Mike) Peca. I get abuse for it and I am called a dirty player. He does the exact same thing and he is just trying to protect himself.

"I'm a little sick and tired of all the crap coming out in the media and the referees and politicians in the league, and they know who they are (and) have seen all the crap and making sure it is known to the referees that make sure you watch Tucker ... don't call anything that is borderline.

"I should have the same rights as Steve Yzerman or Jaromir Jagr. What happens if I break my neck on that play? I could have been two or three inches away from that if my head goes into the boards. Then what is it? A 20- or 30-game suspension?

"But nothing, not even a review because I break my shoulder ... You would hope they didn't make the call because of my number on my jersey. I pray they didn't do that because that's opening up a whole new can or worms ... Is it because it's me? Why is that? There should be no numbers or faces on people out there."

Tucker knows the kind of hockey player he is, knows what has made him successful. He doesn't apologize for any of that, and he even wonders why he has made any attempt to conform to what others want him to be.

His shoulder is dislocated, a bone is apparently broken and his ribs were smarting long before the hit by Alfredsson. The pain, though, doesn't come as much from the broken bone as it does from the playoff circumstance.

"It's just disheartening," Darcy Tucker said, shaking his head. "It will be hard to take if we lose (because of this)."

Tucker is playing it smart
More mature approach pays off for robust winger

Personal stats less important: `All I want to do is win'

MARK ZWOLINSKI
SPORTS REPORTER

There's a simple reason why Darcy Tucker's name is appearing more on the scoresheet than the gossip columns these days.

"As you get older, you don't gamble as much ... you make the safe play," Tucker said yesterday as the Leafs prepared for Detroit tonight at the Air Canada Centre in what could be the biggest test of their winning streak — now at seven games.

Tucker, who shares the team lead in goals (nine) with Mats Sundin, is also the team leader at plus-9. Contrast that to a year ago when he finished the season at minus-7.

The stats bear out the efficiency in his play, mirroring a team-wide focus on making the smart play and a strict adherence to defensive responsibilities.

"I'm at the age (28) where all the other stuff (statistics and controversies) doesn't matter ... all I want to do is win," Tucker said.

Ditto for the rest of the Leafs, a group with an average age just under 31, who are finally showing maturity and good judgment on the ice.

All too often, Tucker and other Leaf veterans have been deservedly portrayed as whiners and malcontents. The result was one bombshell story after the other, from a lack of cohesion in the dressing room last year to the players quitting on coach Pat Quinn this year.

Through it all, the Leafs find themselves second overall in the NHL to Philadelphia. Their seven-game winning streak marks only the third time the franchise has accomplished that feat since the 1974-75 season.

"I've been lucky through my career to be considered a pretty consistent guy," Tucker said. "Hopefully I can continue to do that. The less focus on all that other stuff, the better."

Tucker, in fact, pronounced himself completely renewed upon entering training camp in the fall. But he disputes the notion that the absence of brother-in-law Shayne Corson, who quit the team last year, is the reason for a more focused approach.

"Well, the year I scored the 24 goals, he was there," Tucker said, referring to his career year in 2001-02, which was followed by a 10-goal campaign.

"He was there the year after, too," Tucker acknowledged. "Obviously, I can be a better player. The commitment just has to be there on a consistent basis."

Consistency and commitment to the concept of team has been the key to success this season for both Tucker and the Leafs.

Players point to two pivotal moments this season: A pre-season meeting in which the foul air from last spring was cleared; and a meeting in Edmonton two weeks ago which sparked the seven-game winning streak.

In fact, the team's recent checkered past appears to be a thing of the past. The only question remaining is why did it take so long.

"Well, I'm a very different player than when I started," Tucker said.

"On a personal level, I'm more committed to off-ice conditioning, and I'm more consistent to staying disciplined. I'm not always going to be the guy who scores all the goals, but I can chip in with a big goal here and there, block shots ... contribute."

The noticeable changes in Tucker's on-ice demeanour means he is no longer the Leafs' poster boy for complaining to referees.

"I have been here quite a while now, and I hope I have some influence in our room," Tucker said.

"Sometimes I'm vocal, sometimes I just play hard and that helps. We're a veteran club, everyone's been a captain or an assistant. ... Now it's all about what they can do to contribute to this team."

For more articles on Tucker check out here